Wabash Trace Trail / F Ave to Coin
Section Hiking the Wabash Trace Trail | F Ave to Coin | May 2022
After returning from Utah, we spent a day at home unpacking, doing laundry, and relaxing after our vacation. Curtis spent the afternoon at the maker’s space working on his wood topographic map and making a clock out of scrap wood. He’s now one state away from finishing the map, which means he’ll have to share a post about it soon!
We left again the next morning to go spend the weekend with my family. We enjoyed a relaxing weekend at my family’s home, celebrating Mother’s Day, attending the ‘chalk-the-walk’ and eating pizza from the Lincoln Wine Bar in Mt. Vernon, and meeting our new baby niece who had just arrived a few days prior. She is so easy going and adorable, and it gave me so much joy to see my sister living out her dream of becoming a mom.
The month of May was quite a busy one for us, and the only full week we spent at home came after returning from Iowa. Since the weather was starting to warm up, we decided to spend our Saturday morning hiking another section of the Wabash Trace Trail. We drove an hour to Coin, IA and parked near the campground/trailhead parking. From here, we began our walk heading Northwest towards the road where we had left off two months prior.
While we started as early as we could, it still warmed up rather quick as the morning progressed. This section also had notably less shade than previous sections, so we made sure to take our time and give Charlotte plenty of breaks in the shade. It turns out the biggest motivator for her wasn’t these pleasant breaks in the shade with lots of fresh water and treats offered to her, it was the gross smelling things on the side of the trail. They were just too good not to roll in! She hasn’t realized the correlation yet between rolling in gross things and having to take a bath…
Seeing wildlife continues to be a trend in the more “remote” areas of the trail. Today’s sightings were a garter snake and a giant raccoon crossing the trail a little ways ahead of us. Charlotte was completely oblivious to both of them. Not wanting to startle the raccoon, we made sure to speak loudly as we neared where we saw him cross, just in case.
Aside from these sightings, it was a lovely and uneventful 7.5 mile hike, and we made it back home in time for Curtis to spend a few hours in the maker’s space again. We now only have two sections left, which is great because we’re running out of time and nice days to walk! See our AllTrails recording here.
